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CISSEL IS AWARDED FIRST PLACE IN TIMES CONTEST

FACTUAL QUESTIONS CAUSE MORE DIFFICULTY THAN USUAL

Truman Ross Cissel, Jr. ocC., of Silver Spring, Maryland, is the winner of the New York Times Current Events Contest, it was announced yesterday by Joseph Wright, Superintendent of the Library for Municipal Research, who was in charge of the examination at Harvard. Jerome Sidney Newland '32, of New York City and Philip Henry Cohen '32, of Fort Hancock, New Jersey, are the second and third prize winners.

Contrary to the custom in previous contests, the award of $250 will be divided this year among the first three men, Cissel receiving $150 in cash and a bronze medal while Newland and Cohen will be awarded $75 and $25 respectively.

The first paper will also be submitted for competition in the national contest, where it will be judged with the winning papers of 19 other colleges. An additional prize of $500 will be given to the writer of the best paper in the intercollegiate competition. C. E. Wyzanski '27 won this award in 1926, while H. H. Kleinman '30 received honorable mention last year.

Twenty-five men participated in this year's contest, two less than last year. The board of judges was composed of the following men: Dr. E. P. Herring, chairman, P. S. Wild, and M. A. Shepard. The names of the contestants were unknown to the graders, each man being assigned a number to prevent any possible prejudice in determining the winners.

The factual part of the test proved quite difficult, the identification questions causing more trouble than usual. Such, names as Gates W. McGarrah, Amy Johnson, and "Enterprise", were wrongly identified by a majority of the contestants. In the second and more important section of the quiz, short essays between 250 and 600 words in length, the Wickersham Report, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Conflict between Mr. Hoover and Congress were the most popular of the subjects offered. In commenting on the contest, Mr. Wright said that the papers were of an unusually high standard and displayed evidence of intensive preparation on the part of the contestants.

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